Prior art information processing systems have provided a limited amount of interaction with the user for the purpose of enabling the user to define control functions and input/output devices for the information processing system. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,202,041 issued 6 May 1980 to Kaplow, et al. discloses an information processing system having a dynamically variable keyboard terminal which enables the user to define sets of symbols and formats for the keyboard. U.S. Pat. No. 4,281,315 issued to H. C. Bauer et al, 28 July 1981 discloses a multipoint polling system for the collection of messages from data terminals using different protocols and formats. The Bauer et al system stores sets of instructions individually defining different ones of several communications procedures and, as each item on a polling list is accessed, the instruction set defining the protocol used by the terminal to be polled and controlling the controller sending and receiving equipment is accessed with the instruction set.
U.S. application Ser. No. 310,182, entitled System for Converting Data Processing Information to Text Processing Information and Vice Versa filed 9 Oct. 1981 by R. Amezcua et al discloses a method and means for operating an interactive terminal for data processing system which is capable of accessing information from the data processing system data base, copying the information into the text processing system memory, and automatically converting the information from the data processing system format into the text processing system format.
All of the prior art systems discussed provides some means for interaction between the system operator and the system control program for formatting data that is input to the system or communicated to or from the system. However, none of the prior art systems address the problem of communications between two or more information processing systems wherein the systems' internal data code format or structure is incompatible such that internal character representations are not common and the character sets are not coextensive.